'Democracy fruit of lawyers' struggle'.

LAHORE - Lawyers in the city have said that their struggle bore democracy in the country and helped politicians come out when they were confined to their houses only.

Member Pakistan Bar Council Hafiz Abdul Rahman Ansari, member Punjab Bar Council Atir Mahmood and Chairman Judicial Management Council Shafqat Mahmood Chouhan said objectives of lawyers’ movement would provide solution to all problems facing the country including economic and law and order. But they were of the view that the PPP government was hard to fulfil the objectives wherein restoration of Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry and other deposed judges was at core.

Ansari said he wondered that a party making tall claims of democracy was not listening to the masses’ voice that wanted independent judiciary at the head of Justice Ch. Atir Mahmood said lawyers had rendered exemplary sacrifices in their movement and now turning round from the movement without achieving the aim of an independent judiciary, was not possible.

Barrister Zafarullah Khan, fame for winning Pakistan Steel Mills case in 2006, commenting on the lockdown of the lawyers said that it was just symbolic gesture to attract attention of the government to the way, Justice Chaudhry and other 60 judges of the superior judiciary were sacked and put under house-arrest. He said the arrest and detention of the judges was the most heinous offence ever committed on the national judiciary and the problems this act generated for the country were very acute. He said had the courts taken a notice of that act in time, the present predicament could not have come up to force the legal fraternity to lock-up of the courts. He said Justice Chaudhry did great benefit to the nation by his decision on Pakistan Steel Mills case.

He said judges and the lawyers were members of the same family and if lawyers were struggling for the right and due place and status of other, they in fact were discharging their obligation. And the movement of the lawyers, he said, bore democracy in the country and enabled the politicians to come out in the field and take part in politics.

He said supremacy of the Constitution and rule of law in a manner that no one escapes from it was a dire need of the country and both the sides needed to struggle for that end.